Thomas Mulcair, the clear frontrunner, is the New Democratic Party’s new leader. It almost seemed inappropriate, after a day of serious voting problems caused, the party says, by deliberate online attacks, and given Canada’s recent history of compromise candidates charging up the middle — Stéphane Dion, Ed Stelmach, Alison Redford — often to the party’s eventual detriment.

Not this time. The Dippers have a natural, a consummate pro, at the helm. He’s supposed to be the angry man, but at times in his surprisingly flat victory speech, he could barely contain delighted giggles.

The one question mark remains his ability to inspire loyalty from his caucus, although all and sundry took the stage after his victory was announced, clapped to the music and looked genuinely happy to be there. If he can become a uniting figure, then from a strictly strategic perspective, it’s safe to say the right man won. He’s the proven centre-leftist to Brian Topp’s unproven centre-leftist.

From an existential perspective — well, we shall see. He’s no Jack Layton.

[np-related]

Late in the afternoon, Mr. Mulcair emerged from his campaign headquarters inside the Toronto Convention Centre with that beatific smile he’s had stapled to his face for seven months, and expressed his appreciation for the “Tweet-up” his youthful supporters were putting on.

He said the word “Tweet-up” with the air of someone who had no idea what a “Tweet-up” is and didn’t care to learn. For the record, the kids were sitting in a circle on the carpet, building what they called a “Tower for Tom,” house of cards-style, out of campaign signs. I couldn’t help thinking that Mr. Layton would have plunked himself down amongst them, even at that late hour in the campaign, and asked to have the concept explained to him. Mr. Mulcair uttered some platitudes to a television reporter and was quickly wheeled away.

In his victory speech, the reputedly hot-tempered Mr. Mulcair promised to unite New Democrats “without excluding or demonizing those who disagree with us.” This seems highly unlikely, but the favour certainly will not be returned. Late Saturday, the Conservatives released their talking points: The NDP leader is “an opportunist whose high tax agenda, ambition and divisive personality would put Canadian families at risk,” who would conduct “dangerous economic experiments,” and whose “risky, job-killing carbon tax which would raise the price of everything.”

One suspects this dreary slime won’t stick as easily to Mr. Mulcair as it did to Stéphane Dion. The New Democrats know what he can do on the attack. At his best in Question Period, Mr. Mulcair is outraged without being cartoonish, crisp without being wooden, snarky without being sneering. (Which is not to say he’s always at his best.) Once the campaign caricatures fade into memory, they will remember roughly where his politics are — which is somewhere to the left of a Jean Charest Liberal. And they know that while he cuts a very different public figure than Mr. Layton, they’re not really all that different either.

“It’s clear that he doesn’t fit the textbook definition of a New Democrat that I know of from the years that the party was formed under Tommy Douglas, into the ‘70s and the ‘80s under Ed Broadbent,” veteran Quebec Liberal organizer John Parisella told me recently. “He didn’t come from the labour movement, for instance. He wasn’t doctrinaire. He was a liberal. And liberals are generally open to the role of government, but they’re not doctrinaire about that.”

Again: If they want to win, that’s probably where they need to be. It’s where Jack Layton took them.

“Losing is not a principle. By the same token, neither is victory,” NDP Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter said in an afternoon speech. “Nothing that New Democrats believe in is at all inconsistent with winning. The simple fact is, the founders of our party took the time to knit together … our values and principles with only one purpose in mind: That is to achieve and exercise political power.”

That line got a big cheer. But you have to go pretty far down into the bedrock of NDP values and principles — down into platitudes like “people come before corporations”— for it to be universally accepted as true. Mr. Dexter is of a class of successful provincial New Democrats in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova Scotia that the party likes to put forward as pinnacles of good, reasonable, fiscally responsible government. But Saskatchewanians aren’t Quebecers, and farmers aren’t steelworkers, and autoworkers aren’t downtown Toronto hipsters. And then there’s the bloody socialists!

Now they all have a whip-smart, sharp-tongued brawler as leader. They ought to be cautiously content, at least. And Canadians should look forward to the resumption of a most intriguing battle for the votes of the centre-left — Quebec, once again, included.

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